My mom was just asking me if Romano was headed for some sort of breakdown. I’ll just say “probably” and not spoil it any further for her.
As a long-time ER viewer (from the very beginning) I was saddened to hear Susan tell Newhart’s character (whose name continues to elude me) that her mom, the kooky Cookie, had died. That just seems all wrong. Her mom was Miss Tessmocker, after all!
Jing-Mei is an attending, so is Susan. Romano is, for whtever he’s worth to Pratt, and so is Carter, when he’s not hanging in the Congo. Weaver is also, obviously, an attending when she’s in the ER. And of course, that’s just the group that we know about. There have always been doctors in the ER service who we’ve never seen (though we’ve heard about a couple, certainly) and shifts are flexible.
I don’t think it was just you. He was fiddling around with the scale something fierce, I don’t think that he got an accurate weight on the baby at all. I would put it past Pratt to have fumbled things in the baby’s/hospital policy’s favor just as a sop to his immense zealotry to save the baby and show the mom that everything could be “okay.” Pratt seemed so offended by Luka’s anti-testing stance that he seemed bound and determined to do whatever he could to show that high-end medical technology was meaningful and important and life-saving and life-changing. Unfortunately (IMO), he chose the wrong case to use as an example of that ideal.
I really hate that Pratt and Luka, who are both idealists at heart when it comes to medicine, are being set up to be at odds with one another. When Pratt immediately jumped hot at Luka’s suggestion that perhaps he (Pratt) would benefit from a trip to Africa, I wanted to smack him. Like Luka’s a racist? Please! Pratt is still a resident, and he needs to get over himself.
It was very similar – in that old ep, the documentarian was spying on urse Lydia Wright’s birdlike attitudes when flirting with Policeman Al (who she later married) when Mark caught her – IIRC she was standing behind a rack of scrubs and gowns and secretly taking pictures. Mark then watching Susan secretly, as she talked with Dr. Morganstern about transferring her residency program to Phoenix, and mangled all of the documentarian’s terminology talking to Doug about Susan’s behavior. This was, of course, when Mark decided that he was in love with Susan, right before she left Chicago.
Expanding on one element that’s only been mentioned once in this thread, there was a female drug company representative wandering through the episode, complete with a form-fitting (A-OOGA!) red dress and a completely oblivious attitude. Luka got increasingly hostile to her, as though she was solely responsible for the cost of American medical care.
I, of course, wanted to see her in four-point restraints, but that’s a personal preference.
- Wouldn’t a hospital use a digital scale to weigh a newborn?
- Wouldn’t it violate several dozen health regulations to keep a puppy in the ER?
- Why would the drug company rep hang around the ER? Wouldn’t she be trying to hock it to doctors who aren’t as busy?
I didn’t think that the remark was racist at all. Pratt’s reaction was hot because Luka’s remark implied Pratt was insensitive, wasteful and obviously disinterested in going to the Congo-- and the subtext (whether consciously implied or not) was that Pratt didn’t care about that “his” people are suffering over there.
If Pratt’s character even possesses a vague sense of Africentric unity, Luka was right on.
Pratt got mad because the remarks hit too close to home.
I could see that Pratt was caught between a rock and a hard place.
If the baby was above 500 grams and he hadn’t saved it, then what would stop the baby’s father–or better yet, the mother once she thought it over–from sueing him for malpractice? The rule is there for a reason, and if he had broken it the hospital wouldn’t have had his back.
But then again, who would want to burden a mother with a severely handicapped child?
If I had been Pratt, I would have made Luka handle it.
I didn’t like Sam either. She hasn’t been at the hospital long enough to be yelling at people and giving demands. Plus, you would think she would have taught her bratty little son how to handle his condition better.
I have to admit, though, a black guy telling a white guy to go back to Africa cracked me up.
Sam mentioned her kid’s breath when she was yelling at Luka about not noticing the kid was diabetic. I guess that was supposed to be a reference to the fruity breath that’s a symptom of the serious condition diabetic ketoacidosis.
Neither did I. I realize that my comment may have been misinterpreted – I thought that Luka was right on, and that Pratt needs to a.) grow a set; b.) grow a brain and c.) grow a heart.
As for Sam:
a.) It’s no one else’s job to look after her kid. Arrange some care. Outside the hospital.
b.) How was Luka supposed to know that the kid was acting “weird?” Does Luka have some baseline behavior standard for Sam’s boy that he could use for a comparison? Nope, don’t think so.
c.) Did she really think that Luka should be smelling strangers’ breath, even if they were kids?
d.) Why on earth, since she’s in a healthcare profession, hasn’t she gotten her kid into the diabetic education program that he obviously needs? He’s old enough to be able to manage the basics of his disease, that he’s off eating sugary junk and not checking his sugar/taking his insulin as scheduled says that he has not been properly indoctrinated with the seriousness of his illness. That’s all on Mama.
What I didn’t understand about the whole ketotic breath reference was this: DKA doesn’t develop in a few hours. For the kid to become ketoacidotic, his sugars would have had to have been high for at least a day or two, possibly much longer. That means he got sick on her watch, not Luka’s, and the friggin’ ice cream didn’t have jack to do with it. She’s a nurse, so she bloody well knows all this and is just being a jackass. Luka’s a doctor, so he bloody well knows all this and is fully aware she’s just being a jackass. Why wouldn’t he tell her off for being a jackass and making accusations she knows are baseless? It’s not like he’d been having any trouble yelling at anyone else.
Dr.J says it’s because they’ll wind up in bed together in two weeks. I say it won’t take that long.
I think (and this is just speculation, nothing more) that Luka’s being set up to get serious with this woman - potentially to marry her, but I’m not sure about that.
I don’t know why it feels that way to me, but it does.
So, he’s off to see the Wizard, then?